The military says it has escalated 93 cases of criminal sex offenses to civilian police since December 2021, and 64 of those cases are under investigation.
An independent report released a year ago recommended the government take away jurisdiction over such cases from the military police after a series of sexual misconduct scandals involving high-ranking officers.
Brigadier-General Simon Trudeau, Canadian Forces Provost Marshal, said in a written update that 29 cases the military attempted to pass on were denied by federal, provincial or municipal police forces.
The service member did not give reasons for the denials, but some police forces and the province of Ontario have complained about the strain the additional cases are putting on their resources.
Some 97 other cases reported to the military police were never passed on to another force.
According to the Provost Marshal, in 20 of these cases the victim asked the military police to supervise the case and in others the victims did not want to proceed with a police investigation.
On Thursday, Defense Department and Canadian Armed Forces officials released an update on their efforts to implement the 48 recommendations made in former Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbor’s report last May.
Defense Minister Anita Anand presented a plan last December to implement the changes.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Mr.me Anand said a federal-provincial-territorial committee has been established to facilitate conversations between deputy ministers on the transfer of criminal sex offense cases.
In the meantime, the Armed Forces have reached agreements with the RCMP, Sûreté du Québec and now the Ontario Provincial Police to refer cases to police for investigation, officials said.
In her report, Justice Arbor warned that Ottawa and the provinces could find themselves engaged in “endless discussions” over the issue if the federal government does not officially make the change.
Charlotte Duval-Lantoine of the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, who wrote a book on military sexual misconduct, said the military justice system is not designed to handle such cases.
“The military justice system is not made for that,” she reiterated in an interview Thursday. It’s not to get justice. It is for good order and discipline in the organization. »
The New Democratic Party has called on the Liberals to introduce legislation to permanently remove such cases from the jurisdiction of the military police.